Which are the best drives in France? Big question, to which one answer is —
simply stick a pin in the map and start from there. I’ve driven to most
places in the country and I’d return to any of them any time (with the
exception of Cannes, obviously).
But that’s not terribly helpful if you’re after the perfect motorised spring
break. So, after much soul-searching and calvados, I’ve devised my Top 3: a
classic canter through the Dordogne, a mountain whirl round the Jura, and a
final jaunt to the Loir (no “e”) valley, where old France wears its best
clothes. The best? Arguably. A seductive treat? Sans doute.
Dordogne
It’s only 130 years since Dordogne villagers roasted, then ate, a local
nobleman, so the lovely landscape wasn’t always a source of mellow
wellbeing. (Still isn’t, if you’re a farmer.) But the remoteness that
favoured unreason also kept the region untouched. That’s why it’s so comely
today. Just don’t consider it a summer annexe of our home counties, that’s
all. We start in Bergerac.
DAY ONE
My, what glorious country: vines to Issigeac, then onward through woodland,
pastures and hills. Man and nature are clearly getting along fine. Into
Beaumont, a bastide town built by the English when we ran the region.
The chessboard layout works as well today as it did in the Middle Ages, and
the vast fortified church still contains St Martial’s tooth.
More dramatic relics at Cadouin, a gold-stone village between wooded slopes.
Its great abbey contains “Christ’s head shroud” — proven false in 1933 but
still reverentially on display. They can’t quite let it go. But we can,
moving up the hill (we’ll take prettiness as read from here, otherwise we’ll
never get through), down to the River Dordogne at Le Buisson-de-Cadouin and
into Le Manoir de Bellerive for chateau-hotel pampering and Michelin-starred
food (00 33 5 53 22 16 16, www.
bellerivehotel.com; doubles from £105, half-board adds £40pp).
DAY TWO
Along the lazy river towards St Cyprien, turning off to Milandes, whose
chateau was home to the world’s most celebrated topless dancer. Josephine
Baker bought it with her music-hall fortune. Now, it’s an engrossing
memorial to her extraordinary career, complete with microskirt made of
bananas.
Upriver, Castelnaud castle is sterner. An English stronghold in the Hundred
Years’ War, it stares unflinching across at French-held Château de Beynac.
Both perch high, like stone-built gryphons.
Roll onto La Roque-Gageac, the loveliest part of the valley: looping river,
cliffs and village scrambling up and over itself for space. Lunch at La
Belle Etoile (05 53 29 51 44; from £17), then proceed to Sarlat, the
Dordogne’s emblematic town, with the best-restored centre in France. Its
network of streets, passages, squares and time-served buildings articulates
a medieval and Renaissance past as if it were still present. The description
“atmospheric” doesn’t get close. (Neither does “crowded” in summer.) Take
your time here.
Now, cross-country to Les Eyzies and the Hôtel-Restaurant Cro-Magnon (05 53 06
97 06, www.hostellerie-cro-magnon.com;
doubles from £50). Why “Cro-Magnon”? The hotel backs into the cliff where
skeletons of modern man were first unearthed. The Vézãre valley was thick
with flint-chipping ancestors. Prehistory, like recreational canoeing, is a
regional trademark.
DAY THREE
Along the road to the Musée National de Préhistoire (05 53 06 45 45, www.musee-prehistoire-eyzies.fr;
£3.50), to study the flow of prehistoric affairs. That’s the theory. Now the
practice. Out of Les Eyzies to the Font de Gaume, the only French cave where
you can still see original polychrome paintings (book ahead: 05 53 06 86
00). Bison and horse, of course, but also a stag reindeer licking a doe’s
face: a message of tenderness across 15,000 years.
Follow the Vézãre, in the lee of tree-clad cliffs, to L’Auberge du Peyrol (05
53 50 72 91; from £14), at Sergeac, for lunch. Double back to the Roque St
Christophe, a soaring rock face slit with terraces and caves. It served as a
settlement and fort from 50,000BC through to the Renaissance. Don’t miss it.
Next, Périgueux, the most beguiling mid-sized town in France. Check into the
brand-new Hôtel Mercure (05 53 06 65 00, www.mercure.com;
doubles from £70) and dine at Le Clos Saint-Front (05 53 46 78 58; from
£15).
DAY FOUR
Devote the morning to this country town with big ideas, bigger meals and a
vibrant, tangled old centre. Then dart down the Isle valley and cut across
the lost farming world back to Bergerac.
Getting there: Ryanair (0871 246 0000, www.
ryanair.com) flies to Bergerac from Stansted; Flybe (0871 700 0535, www.flybe.com)
flies from Exeter and Southampton.
Jura
Mountains, forests and gorges; cows, castles and Courbet; noble salt works and
a bar with a national frontier through the middle. This is the Jura, and it
breathes the rude health of a bountiful life won hard. The weirdest thing
is, nobody goes there. What are we waiting for?
DAY ONE
From Geneva airport, the E25 (direction: Nyon) heads up, and up, the Givrine
Pass to Les Rousses, just in France. Spread over the mountain, it’s a place
of chalets, grandiose panoramas and outdoor attitudes. Check in at Le
Chamois (00 33-3 84 60 01 48, www.lechamois.org;
doubles from £43), then nip to the old fort, now split winningly between an
adventure park and a comté cheese centre. Take the cheese tour:
smelly and serious.
Later, hop the mile to La Cure, where the Bar-Hôtel Arbez sits bang on the
Franco-Swiss border. Order white wine in France, move two feet along the
bar, and drink it in Switzerland.
DAY TWO
Down the gorge to the next plateau and, via Morez and Mouthe, to forest and
pasture heavy with montbéliard cattle. Skirt the lovely lake to Château de
Joux (03 81 69 47 95, chateaudejoux.com;
£4), stuck on a promontory for Swiss attacks that never came. Good visit,
though.
Lunch at Le Grand Café Français (36 Rue de la République; from £10) in
Pontarlier, once the world capital of absinthe. The drink was banned when
regular topers started going mad. It’s legal now, but weaker. Get the tale,
and tastings, at Distillerie Guy (03 81 39 04 70, www.pontarlier-anis.com).
From there, down to the sunny old town of Ornans, all warm stone, footbridges
and tanners’ houses overhanging the river. Gustave Courbet was born here in
1819. The house is now a little gallery (03 81 62 23 30, www.musee-courbet.
com), full of his dark countryside views.
To Besançon. Within its river loop, the tree-festooned regional centre
displays an urge, like Périgueux, to remain a country town. Stay at the
Hôtel Charles Quint (03 81 82 05 49, www.hotel-charlesquint.com;
doubles from £59), and eat at the Brasserie 1802 (03 81 82 21 97; from £18),
named for the year Victor Hugo was born here.
DAY THREE
Wander Besançon. It’s terribly welcoming, with blue-grey buildings, Roman
stuff, Hugo’s house and a provincial buzz on the streets. Then head up to
the citadel dominating the town. Vast and complex, it never saw action, so is
a stately and unscathed setting for, inter alia, a zoo, an aquarium
and a harrowing second world war museum (03 81 87 83 33, www.citadelle.com;
£5.50). There’s also the Taverne brasserie, for a reasonable lunch (from
£9).
Now, south to Arc-et-Senans, for an even more extraordinary setup: salt works
that look like an aristocratic estate (£5.40 adults, £2.50 under16s; www.salineroyale.com).
The 18th-century architect argued that noble surroundings would make labour
and labourers pretty noble themselves. Predictably, production bosses didn’t
share the ideal. They ran the place as a work camp, killing off workers by
the age of 35. But nobility lingers in the intentions.
As it does at Château de Germigney (03 84 73 85 85, www.chateaudegermigney.com;
doubles from £85; dinner from £43pp), in the dinky riverside village of
Port-Lesney. A last-night treat: cosseting on a historic scale, and epic
eating. DAY FOUR
To Arbois, whose yellow-ochre stones glow with the prosperity gained as
regional wine capital. Amble the tiny streets and bridges to the family home
of Louis Pasteur (03 84 66 11 72; £4; guided tours only). It’s been left as
if the old boy had just popped out for a fresh batch of bacteria.
Time to taste the Jura’s idiosyncratic wines ( vin jaune, vin
de paille) at the Domaine Rolet shop, opposite the town hall, before
posh lunch next door chez Jean-Paul Jeunet (03 84 66 05 67, www.jeanpauljeunet.com;
from £35). Now, wend back to Les Rousses, first along the sinuous wine ways
to Château-Chalon, then up to Crançot and on to the Jura lake district. Take
your time. The wending is quite wonderful.
Getting there: British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com)
flies to Geneva from Heathrow and Gatwick. Ryanair and Flybe (details as
above) serve Geneva from UK regional airports.
The Loir Valley
To the north of the grander, château-studded Loire (with an “e”), the River
Loir weaves past hills, forest and farmland, between vineyards and through
villages where a “chain store” is still the ironmonger’s. La
vieille France, then, but spick and span, too. Flowers abound, the food
is good and the bathrooms work.
If you need to slow down, get there — quick.
DAY ONE
We start at Vendôme, where, having split up outside town, the river wriggles
through the old centre in any number of channels, past ramparts, weeping
willows and wash houses. In short, it’s a delight, equipped with a great
gothic church and the statutory famous son (Balzac). Amble peaceably, then
stay and dine at the contemporary Saint-Georges hotel (00 33-2 54 67 42 10, www.hotel-saint-georges-vendome.com;
doubles from £46; dinner from £22).
DAY TWO
Head out into a landscape surviving from a time when speed limits were
superfluous: wooded slopes, vineyards, with the Loir setting the meandering
pace. After Villiers-sur-Loir, nip across to Thoré-la-Rochette, because (a)
in an ideal world, it’s where you’d want your children to grow up, and (b)
it has Patrice Colin’s Coteaux du Vendômois wines (02 54 72 80 73).
Along to Lavardin, perched perfectly between hillside and river. Nip into the
church for the medieval frescoes, then to Le Relais d’Antan for lunch (02 54
86 61 33; from £20).
And so to the astonishing Trôo, where, over 2,000 years, locals have hacked
into the chalk cliffs to quarry, take refuge — and make their homes. The
result is a vertical troglo-village punched into the rock on four levels.
Farm-working families lived here till the 1960s, and one cave-home has been
maintained as it was: now, inevitably, cave-dwelling has grown fashionable,
and arty, wealthy types are busy with the process of troglo-gentrification.
Don’t miss it.
Then make for the Moulin de la Plaine chambres d’hôtes,
outside the village (02 54 72 57 84, www.moulindelaplaine.com;
doubles from £43, B&B). Eat at the Auberge Ste-Catherine (02 54 72
51 23; from £15).
DAY THREE
Hop into St Jacques-des-Guérets for the valley’s best church frescoes, then to
Couture-sur-Loir and the Possoniãre manor house, where the poet Pierre de
Ronsard “spent the first 12 years of his life listening to the call of the
muses”. Which must have made things easier for his mum.
At Ruillé-sur-Loir, winemaker Raynald Lelais has lovely Jasniãres whites on
the main road through, while, at La Chartre-sur-le-Loir, the Hôtel de France
(02 43 44 40 16), on the central square, has everything a vintage provincial
hotel should have, including lunch from £12.
Dawdle on to Le Lude for the masterful castle, then to La Flãche, from whose
tiny riverside port a local aristocrat set out to found Montreal, because
God told him to. It’s a disarming spot, which I’d hesitate to leave,
whatever God said. Stay at the Hôtel le Vert Galant (02 43 94 00 51; doubles
from £45) and dine at La Fesse d’Ange (02 43 94 73 60; from £25).
DAY FOUR
Continue to Bazouges and Durtal and, if you fancy a fourth night, the Château
de Chambiers (02 41 76 07 31, www.chateauchambiers.com;
doubles from £68). You’ll likely be so relaxed by now that you’ll forget to
go home.
Getting there: Ryanair (www.ryanair.com)
flies from Stansted to Tours.
